white paper

Why Moving Your Contact Centerto the Cloud is the Way to Go

3 abstract

WHITE PAPER

table of contents

6 summary

3 the changing contact center industry

4 cost benefits of hosted solutions 4 Scalability 4 Flexible Technology Integration 5 Workforce Optimization 5 Reliability 5 Carrier Neutrality 5 VOIP/TDM

6 demonstrable return on investment

This document is

Copyright © 2012 by USAN.

This document contains

information that is confidential

and proprietary to USAN. No

part of this publication may be

reproduced or distributed in any

form or by any means or stored

in a database or retrieval system

without prior written permission

of USAN.

All products, trade names, and

registered trademarks used in this

document are acknowledged.

WHITE PAPER: WHY MOVING YOUR CONTACT CENTER TO THE CLOUD IS THE WAY TO GO 2© USAN • 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

AbstractThis paper explores the value proposition for hosted contact center

solutions and compares them to legacy, premises-based services.

It contains an overview of the hosted contact center concept,

differentiators for hosted contact center architectures, and advanced

capabilities and benefits of hosted solutions. The paper also captures

some of the predominant reasons behind the rapid expansion

and surge in demand for hosted solutions in the contact center

marketplace.

Enterprise technology-adoption decision makers should take note of

the cost benefits and platform flexibility of a hosted contact center

environment. Hosted models are ideal for businesses of varying sizes,

including:

5 Expanding companies

5 Businesses with geographically dispersed offices

5 Emerging small and medium-sized businesses interested in

augmenting center capabilities in sync with their growth

5 Businesses in need of superior center continuity and

contingency planning

5 Enterprises with fluctuating peak contact center demands

5 Companies with fluctuating contact center labor pools or

requiring advanced agent support capabilities

5 Businesses navigating merger and acquisition activities

5 Enterprises interested in common reporting across applications

The Changing Contact Center IndustryThe contact center industry is undergoing a significant change as new

and emerging technologies continue to supplant traditional premises-

based contact center solutions. Advances are driven by innovations in

Internet Protocol (IP) technologies and networking evolutions which

enable a host of new features and capabilities, including:

5 Inherently diverse platform infrastructures

5 Unification of dispersed agents and resources

5 Superior monitoring and trending capabilities

5 Greater flexibility in center management

5 Superior platform redundancy

5 Enhanced service scalability

5 On-demand, usage-based pricing

These capabilities enable new ways of doing business that reduce

capital expenditures, expand productivity, and create improved

channels for sales and service. Ideal for help desks, sales, technical

support, business continuity services, and more, hosted contact

center models are resuscitating an industry that has long been

suffocating under legacy, premises-based solutions and bulging

capital expenditure demands.

WHITE PAPER: WHY MOVING YOUR CONTACT CENTER TO THE CLOUD IS THE WAY TO GO 3© USAN • 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Cost Benefits of Hosted SolutionsNearly every feature of a hosted contact center solution has a cost

benefit associated with it. A significant, primary cost advantage with

a hosted solution is the ability to pay for services on an as-needed

and per-transaction basis. This is in stark contrast to premises-based

services which require enterprises to purchase outright hardware

and software licenses and agree to ongoing substantial maintenance

contracts as their platforms oftentimes need to be significantly

overbuilt in order to accommodate peak contact periods. Premises-

based models underutilize their assets the majority of the time

whereas hosted solutions are modeled to accommodate peak contact

periods and only charge for this peak contact period usage when

additional capacity and services are utilized.

Hosted solutions have the flexibility to efficiently service the undulating

requirements of a business in a more cost-effective manner. Fully

hosted architectures deliver on the promise of lower CAPEX costs, free

enterprises from having to plan for hardware and end-of-life issues,

reduce burdensome maintenance costs, and eliminate the need for

continual software revisions.

The reduction in required hardware and software resources to support

an existing application base lowers costs associated with:

5 Network connectivity

5 Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Automatic Call Distributor

(ACD) ports

5 Speech recognition and other software licenses

5 Equipment, power, and space

5 Environmental controls

5 VXML licenses and servers

5 Monitoring and trouble reporting

5 Training and administrative expenses

5 On-site personnel, developers, etc.

1. SCALABILITY

Improved workforce, hardware and application scalability can be

achieved through hosted solutions. An entire hosted platform and its

associated agent pool can be scaled up or down depending on the

changing requirements of the business in regards to functionality,

seasonal or peak contact periods, and business objectives such as

sales promotions, campaign management and product introduction.

Hosted models allow businesses to purchase services and seats on

demand to meet their business needs and avoid the numerous costs

associated with overbuilding and staffing premises-based, centralized

solutions. Businesses are able to scale seamlessly without service or

quality disruptions.

2. FLEXIBLE TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION

Subscription-based hosted models allow businesses to adopt and

trial new functionality without investing significant time or capital.

This reduced risk enables businesses to better fine-tune services to

meet the needs of customers and business objectives. Services can

be adopted and removed on a regular basis without the expensive

overhead of purchasing systems and software that may or may not be

a proper fit for a business’ specific center environment.

Hosted solutions can provide access to the latest contact center

technologies as they are introduced and remove the time-intensive

process of building, implementing and maintaining new hardware

and software components within the platform. This flexibility also

removes costs associated with the additional personnel needed to

perform these operations.

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3. WORKFORCE OPTIMIZATION

By decentralizing contact centers, businesses gain capabilities

never before experienced. They maintain superior visibility and

control into agent scheduling, monitoring and performance, as

well as call-flow data tracking, application management and more.

Hosted solutions enable businesses to create centralized queues

that intelligently route contacts to qualified agents who meet

specific skill sets without requiring them to be located in a single

location. The number of locations for agents can be limitless, thus

enabling businesses to reduce costs for dedicated services to

centralized centers, hire and retain better qualified personnel, and

seamlessly manage service level requirements and personnel from

various locations without degradation in quality.

Managers can increase efficiently and effectively manage queues,

coach and schedule agents, monitor contact histories and call

flows, and more through Web-based monitoring and dashboard

views of an enterprise’s entire contact center platform. This

virtualized contact center capability opens the door to near

limitless possibilities.

This remote center approach can reduce seat costs, increase

retention rates and expand the center pool when needed.

Enterprises can increase efficiency and maximize the effectiveness

of agents and applications to drive higher performance levels of

customer service, sales and marketing campaigns, collections and

other contact center objectives.

4. RELIABILITY

Ensuring business continuity is paramount and hosted solutions

provide the necessary reliability with the dispersion (and costs) of

physical assets and personnel. The reliability of most hosted contact

center solutions is oftentimes superior to premises-based solutions in

that systems can be dispersed geographically and serve as complete

backups to one another. When buttressed with a shared, soft-switch

architecture, hosted platforms can allow all applications full access to

state-of-the-art, contact center feature sets so there are no stranded

investments in the case of a location fault.

Hosted center providers that offer disaster recovery sites can replicate

—in real-time— the information from their primary network operations

centers (NOCs). In the event of a disaster, these hosted solution

providers can offer full functionality from the disaster recovery site.

In addition, a robust, hosted NOC can monitor all facets of the

service delivery platform, including carrier connectivity, platform

performance, data connectivity, and host response performance. This

allows a hosted solutions provider to proactively identify and correct

many problems before an application is ever affected.

5. CARRIER NEUTRALITY

When integrated with multiple carriers, hosted platforms can allow for

more effective capacity planning and trouble management processes to

ensure adequate capacity for contacts on its platform and quickly identify

trouble ownership between the platform, enterprise resources and

carrier networks. Redundancy and survivability of an IVR, ACD and other

contact center functionality are delivered at carrier-grade standards when

connected to a hosted solution provider’s multi-node platform which can

rely on the redundancy of carriers’ meshed networks.

When co-locating with carriers, hosted providers have more contact

center switching and routing capabilities than those available from a

carrier’s traditional service. By tightly integrating with neutral carriers,

hosted providers can more effectively manage capacity planning

and trouble management processes to ensure adequate capacity for

contacts on their networks and quickly identify trouble ownership

between the platform, enterprise resources and carrier networks.

6. VOIP/TDM

Many hosted platforms connect with both time division multiplexing

(TDM) and IP circuits with network interfaces that are independent

from applications, thus any given application can receive inbound

calls on TDM and IP – providing enterprises complete flexibility and

enhanced contact center capabilities.

In addition, when modularly designed, platforms can allow for remote

gateways located at any hardened site. This provides an extension of

an IP backbone that can be used to create private IP networks capable

of offering IP services for existing legacy TDM locations.

WHITE PAPER: WHY MOVING YOUR CONTACT CENTER TO THE CLOUD IS THE WAY TO GO 5© USAN • 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Demonstrable Return On InvestmentSeveral market research groups have documented the dramatic

growth of the hosted contact center industry, between 30 to 45% per

year. This growth is spurred by the benefits and positive return on

investment (ROI) of moving to a hosted solution. The same research

projects ROIs of 20 to 50% depending on the individual business

environments.

USAN can work with enterprises to analyze their current call center

infrastructure environment and their desired end-state architecture to

develop a cost comparison between premises and hosted solutions.

Hosted contact center solutions enable businesses to concentrate on their core capabilities while the complexities of a contact center platform are independently managed and its services tailored to meet the unique needs of the enterprise.

SummaryReducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) with any solution is a

significant benefit to most every enterprise. Hosted contact centers

provide a unique combination of flexibility in regards to applications,

workforce management, reliability, and overall cost savings versus

comparable premise-based solutions.

Enterprises of all sizes can benefit from hosted contact center

solutions. Hosted solutions are easily provisioned and maintained,

provide an appealing alternative to the inflexibility of premise-

based solutions, allow enterprises to take advantage of cutting-edge

technologies without maximum investment and provide an improved

return on investment. They enable businesses to concentrate on their

core capabilities while complexities of a contact center platform are

independently managed and its services tailored to meet the unique

needs of the enterprise.

About USAN

USAN helps companies profitably engage customers and deliver amazing cross-channel experiences with

the industry’s first and only cloud, premise and hybrid multi-channel customer engagement solution. From

traditional telephone interactions to the web, social media and everything between, USAN’s portfolio of call

center products delivers effective and affordable customer experience and contact management. In addition

to campaign management, back-office integration, and business process automation, USAN’s premise and SaaS

offerings include IVR, ACD, and outbound dialers, all built upon a fifth-generation carrier-grade infrastructure

that delivers “five nines” of availability and proven scalability.

3080 Northwoods Circle

Norcross, GA 30071

www.usan.com

office 770.729.1449

fax 770.729.8589

WHITE PAPER: WHY MOVING YOUR CONTACT CENTER TO THE CLOUD IS THE WAY TO GO 6© USAN • 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED